Sunday, August 23, 2009

Thursday I spoke to my Mom on the phone. I found that she needed to have some furniture removed from her apartment. On Saturday she would be moving from the apartment in Breton that has been her home for 20 years, into a seniors lodge in Leduc. I told her I would get the furniture with my big trailer. So I let my supervisor know that I would miss the rest of my Thursday shift at familysearch.org, and then we hitched up the trailer and drove to Breton. We visited with Mom and her sister Vi, and loaded up the trailer and came home.
While I was there, I asked a family history question. My cousin's daughter thought that Grandpa Richard Ing had gotten in trouble with the law as a little boy back in England for stealing food. I had never heard that story, so I asked Mom and Vi. They both immediately said "No!", then Vi said "He got in trouble for selling matches." This was the version of the story that I was familiar with. In any case, the 1891 census shows Richard Ing, aged 8 as an inmate of The Childrens Home in Gravesend, Kent, England. At age 14 he came to Canada as one of the British Home Children, and became a successful homesteader and farmer by the standards of the day. He was an incurable tease, but he was one of the kindest and gentlest people I have ever known.
We had a phone call from our daughter Evelyn. She is starting the 4th year of her Bachelor of Education program, and received a letter from the Gold Key Honor Society. This was a very positive experience for her. She has sometimes said that if it wasn't for bad luck, she would have no luck at all. And she has certainly had her share of bad luck. It is nice to see her receive this recognition. Good work Evelyn!
I have recently been doing searches on Genes Reunited, instead of waiting for the site to identify "hot matches" with my family tree. I have had some good experiences.

One of Susan Kinney's descendants replied. She is a distant cousin to my wife.

A cousin of mine in the Andrew New family of Froxfield, Hants, replied and gave me the names and birthdates of 7 of my direct line ancestors! This site has potential that I hadn't really investigated. I will need to do more searches!

In contrast, the free access to worldvitalrecords.com left me disappointed. It was largely my own fault. I discovered the advanced search form on the last day of the free trial, and I had found the basic Firstname + Lastname search much too general. There should also be some way to request British records only, instead of having to wade through all of the "hits" from America when I am looking for people who were never in America. Maybe there is such a feature, but I didn't find it.
Friday I joined my son Blaine in the volunteer work crew to assemble the new playground for Millgrove Elementary School in Spruce Grove. We got a lot done, but after 7 hours I had to sign out. I arrived home more dirty and more physically exhausted than I have been for years. Still, I felt good about helping to build a playground for my grandchildren and their friends.
Saturday, Judy and I served our usual shift at the Edmonton Temple. While there, I had a pleasant visit with my friends John and Audrey McCaslin, who were attending. They said that they will be released from their family history service mission at the end of this month. They have really enjoyed the opportunity to help people in FamilySearch Indexing, but are looking forward to having more free time for their own projects. I told them that my situation is similar, except that my release will come in January. (After a few months of "time off", maybe I will submit another application for a church service mission in family history. Time will tell!)
Families are forever!

Saturday, August 08, 2009

Last Saturday was our annual Ing family reunion. The Ing family are very "Inglish" with roots going back to Buckinghamshire, England. My grandfather and his older brother James came to Canada in the late 1800s. Their mother, sister Ada, and brother Thomas came to Canada in the early 1900s, shortly after the death of their father Thomas George Ing.

I am trying to drum up support for a 2010 Ing Family book, as this will mark 25 years since the previous one.

Besides visiting, genealogy, and playing cards, horse shoe pitching is always a part of our reunion. My uncle Evans, although he is in his 80s is a champion player, and competed recently in the Alberta Senior's games. Some of the other members of the family are quite good too. I, on the other hand am not. Laurel was my partner, but she handled the handicap well. We were eliminated in the first round, but were not totally skunked!

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The weather was nice for most of the day and then a strong wind storm developed. Did that deter our horse shoe pitchers? Not in the least, as you will see in the photo! This wind storm did severe damage in some areas. At the Big Valley Jamboree a woman was killed and 15 more spectators were injured when a stage and bleachers collapsed. A mile from my house, vehicles received expensive hail damage. In various places the wind damaged buildings and trees. We were fortunate.

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My big project (well, one of them) for the summer was replacing my 32-year old furnace. Judy and I removed the old one from the house with the help of a winch and our car's bumper hitch. Chris helped me haul the new furnace home and put it in place. Then over the past two weeks I have been hooking everything up again. The biggest job was building an adapter to hook the new furnace to the old plenum, but the second version of the plenum adapter did the job. I tested the furnace on Friday and it is working fine! Bring on the winter! No!!! I take that back. We haven't really had summer this year, so let's bring on the summer and autumn first! A few days ago the weather man said that although we are in mid-summer and Australia is in mid-winter, the forecast high temperature was identical for Edmonton and Sidney.

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It is always a pleasure to get emails and phone calls about family history. This morning I had a call from someone researching a line connected to the family of Andrew Buchanan and Mary Jane Booth. It was a delightful conversation that helped both of us.